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I am a customer in Kolkata, India, and I have reached a point of such frustration with your service here, that I probably will never buy another HP product again.

My new printer which is in the warranty period is erratic. Sometimes it prints and xeroxes and sometimes it does not. I am a writer and I need my printer all the time! But your service center in Kolkata has harassed me for 3 weeks, lying and deceiving me, and my printer is still not fixed. I believe they are trying to drag it out till the warranty expires. I am including here all the reports and emails.

I complained over 3 weeks ago on 4 August, and today is 25th August and I am still with a broken printer. Three technicians have come. Each pretends he does not know what the problem is and pretends it’s a fresh complaint and not a follow up to install parts the previous technician suggested. They don’t even know the name of the parts. One of them told me CPCA means color projection ink something and that it’s unimportant.

When the first technician came, it did not print and xerox. He wrote a report that it needed replacement of the CPCA and MPCA. I did not hear from him or the service center any more. After one week I called the technichian and he said he was living in Bihar now. The center seemed confused like they didn’t know what I was talking about.

They sent a second technician who came without the parts the first technician had ordered. He said he knew nothing about my problem or parts! The printer xeroxed and printed once in front of him. He said it is fine. I told him it was erratic. He said it would be fine.

The next day again the printer did not print and xerox. I called on the next working day after a 3 day weekend holiday and I was told I should have called earlier (even though your office was closed!). Then I was told to call Delhi. I got no answer why the parts ordered by the first engineer were not got. I emailed Delhi.

Then a third engineer came. He also knew nothing about the problem of my printer and had seen no prior reports. The printer printed once. Then it did not xerox or print. He wrote a report saying it needed a MPCA and a control panel. I said if the control panel was broken then it would not print at all. I asked why he did not get the CPCA like the first technician had suggested. He said CPCA was only for the ink cartridge. I said the internet says it is its something for the programming code which sound like the problem to me. Since the first engineer suggested it, why didn’t he change all three? He said HP would not allow it. So even if three parts are broken only two can be changed. Is this your policy?

After many emails a Mr. KadirKhan called on 23 August, at 11.30 and said he had been specially assigned by Delhi to sort this out. “What is the problem?” He did not see the three reports or read any of the emails like none of that mattered anyway. He had no answer for why the parts ordered on 5 August were not got and fitted even after 3 weeks. He then said “I promise to call in 3 hours and fix this.” That was two days ago.

But what I now demand is a new printer for the harassment your company has put me through. You have wasted my time, energy and resources. I don’t trust your technicians. I don’t think the franchisee IQOR you have here in Kolkata wants to or will try to get the proper parts to fix this printer. They just want the warranty period to run out. So I demand HP give me new printer.

On 16 Nov, 2015, I Had Sent the Following Letter to The Offices Addressed Below, Requesting Protection and Urgent Action on Benami (Fake) Bank Accounts under the Name “Palm Place Syndicate,” And on the Criminal Nexus Involved, Who Are a Serious Threat to Me and My Mother’s Safety

1. I have enclosed in the letter for Mr. Gaurav Sharma, DC Police, SE, Kolkata, a cheque (no.689087 of SBI) from my mother, Indira Banerji of the amount Rs.6000/- made out A/C Payee to “Palm Place Syndicate.”This is the benami (fake) bank account (S/B 04770100017689 in Indian Overseas Bank, Ballygunge Park Rd., Kolkata), I have already complained about to all your offices. We’ve been forced to put Rs.1,04,000/- into this account since June 2015, due to harassment, threats, assault and destruction of our property. I am writing, because we cannot take this anymore and we urgently need the police, RBI and ED to take action on these accounts and on the individuals involved in this extortion nexus to ensure our safety. The banks have refused to act as it involves internal corruption. Karaya police station has not acted despite our FIRs on extortion, assault, and property damage (FIR 217, FIR 292, FIR 539). [See Appendix 21]

2. At the back of the check my mother has written this note to explain why she is sending it:
“I, Indira Banerji, do not want to put this money in the account S/B 04770100017689 which is under the name ‘Palm Place Syndicate.’ But I have been forced under threat, violence and other pressure to deposit this and other cheques by the following:
1) Biman Dhar (Address, Phone)
2) Prem Prakash Sahoo (Address, Phone)
3) Somnath Bhattacharyya (HR, Premiere World Tech Ltd., Address, Phone)
4) Michael J. Pook(Employee of Premier World Tech, Occupant of Indira Banerji’s flat no.7 for 28 years, Phone)
5) A.K. Ghosh (Victor Moses Co., Address; phone)I am asking Mr. Gaurav Sharma (D.C. Police, SE) to give the check to one of the five above , if he thinks this is right.”

3. In October 2014, I discovered the ‘Palm Place Syndicate’ account in the Standard Chartered Bank (a/c 33610022158) into which these men had been making my mother put money for “maintenance” of her ownership flats for many years, is a benami (fake) account. The account has no registration, PAN, identity proof, or address proof, and had been in the bank’s legal cell since 2010. We found this out when Mr. Biman Dhar, Mr. Nikhilesh Chandra Roy [phone], Mr. Prem Prakash Sahoo and Mr. Pinakpani Chakravarti [phone], conspired to make my mother, Indira Banerji a signatory to that account in Sept 2014, by saying they now wanted a “lady” to take care of the “building society account.” I discovered that the account had already been served the final legal closure notice two months prior to that. Prior to this, they had blocked my mother from any access to this bank account even though with two flats she is a majority flat owner in the building. [See Appendix 1, 3, 7, 8]

4. They also pulled out all the money in the account through K.R. Sriram, the auditor who (I then realized) had been making fake audit reports on Palm Place Syndicate’s benami bank account till 2013. Mr. Sriram has refused to communicate with us. [See Appendix 4, 10, 11, 12]

5. Mr. Biman Dhar and the other flat owners have refused to give us any proof of registration and byelaws for ‘Palm Place Syndicate’ as a registered building society. They make random demands for large sums of money and make us deposit the money directly in the account without giving any receipt. They make random cash withdrawals, write checks to ‘self’, give fake name of companies for repair and paints, and refuse to provide any bills, accounts or receipts for money taken or used. Their demands keep escalating and now they want in lakhs. They have conspired to harass us by sabotaging our drinking water, destroying our property, and physical violence. They are doing this because there are no official documents, and they are using the benami accounts to extort money but likely also for other illegal activities. We don’t know how many benami accounts in how many banks they have under this name of ‘Palm Place Syndicate,’ or what activities they are used for. One owner, Mrs. Ruchi Jain [phone] told us she had also opened an account with Mr. Dhar in (more…)

Last week millions of Hindu women proudly celebrated a festival whose fundamental tenet is misogynistic. This is the festival of Karva Chauth. Women deprive themselves of food and water all day, and after sunset break their fast after they’ve viewed the moon through a kitchen sieve. They’ve been told that if they do this, the gods will ensure long lives for their husbands. In a country where every year, more than a 100,000 married women are murdered for dowry — burnt, hung, stabbed, poisoned, drowned, or driven to suicide — by their husbands and in-laws, and not a day goes by without media reports of such deaths, this womanly fixation on ensuring a long life for the husband seems sort of bizarre. But there is a cultural explanation for Indian women’s fixation on their husbands’ long lives….

As a feminist activist and director of The 50 Million Missing Campaignto end female genocide in India, one of the questions I’m often asked in interviews is “How do we raise strong daughters?”

I have to admit, that there’s a part of me that is always uncomfortable with this question being asked in context of violence on girls and women. Because what I feel it does, is that in a round-about-way it puts the onus or blame of gender-based violence on the victim. It’s almost like saying, the reason girls and women get battered and/or killed is because they are weak. And if they weren’t they wouldn’t. Sexist and misogynist violence effects even the strongest of women, simply because the system (social, religious, legal etc.) permits it. In fact determinedly perpetuates it. Victims of violence, be it race, religion or gender based violence, are NOT inherently weak, but are weakened by constant social battering.

So I believe the process of raising strong daughters is to off-set the very social and cultural conditioning and values that are meant to rob us of our strengths and potentials as individuals. These are ideas and values that many of us, even those opposed to sexist societies, imbibe and perpetuate unconsciously. Below I talk about 10 such things that we, as mothers, fathers, teachers, and guardians need to be mindful of, in how girls are raised in society, so we don’t rob them of their inherent strengths and potentials. So that we consciously provide our daughters with an environment where they can realize and proudly assume their powers in full. And are able to let “their strong woman within” shine through.

1.Teach her to know her Self by listening to her inner voice, instincts, thoughts and inclinations.

2. Teach her to be comfortable with what’s different in her even when it is at odds with what society says she should be.

3. Teach her that she is exceptional in her own way, and that you are going to be by her side as she discovers, explores and expresses her individual identity.

4. Teach her that choices she makes come with responsibilities that she must also assume. But that they also come with the freedom to make a new choice if she finds her first choice to be wrong.

5. Teach her that she has the right to be wrong, and that’s the path of discovery and growth.

6. Teach her that if she believes in herself, and her dreams and goals, she does not need the approval of the whole world.

7. Teach her that she will face harshness in this society, and she will face rejection, and that it does not matter as long as she believes in who she is and what she is doing.

8. Teach her to value experiences and work that allow her to be herself.

9. Teach her to value people who love her for who she is not what she does or has.

10. Teach her to celebrate each time she takes a stand against social or cultural pressure to conform and stands true to what she knows and believes in, even if at the end of the day, she won’t get a public award or standing ovation for it.

But the really bad news is that that isn’t a real estimate of how many can actually read and write in India. When there was a lot of angst expressed over how India houses almost half the world’s illiterates, the government got down to work on it — of course Indian style.

They created a new official definition for ‘literacy.’ By this unique Indian method, anyone who can read and write their name is officially counted as literate!! So Sita who can write S I T A, but doesn’t know the alphabets, can’t read and write anything else, considers herself literate.

Not only that, these women even when they work and earn, have no idea of how much they are actually earning or should be earning. They have no concept of savings, or calculation of change when they go shopping and take whatever change is handed over to them. So among the 60% women literates, 84% (see below) have little or no idea of how to handle daily cash transactions!

There was a Sita who had worked as a part-time domestic help for for me for a year. She was proud to call herself “literate” and insisted on signing the pay register instead of putting her thumb print as is customary for “illiterates” in India. They are called the “angootha chchaps” (thumb printers) — an offensive term. Naturally no one wants to own it. I had about 12 ‘signatures’ from Sita, all wildly varying in shapes and proportions. She turned down repeated requests from me to allow me to teach her. She said what she ‘knew’ sufficed her. Of course I or someone was always there to fill her forms, help her with her banking etc. But she was happy and proud to say she could write. As I suppose is India!